President Trump and US politics catchall

[Rhubarb & Custard]

Not a natural born US citizen. Trump would need to get congress to change the constitution. Not going to happen.

Not that long ago since we couldn't imagine any of this shit happening...

Would require a change to the constitution. That needs a two thirds majority in both Congress and the House of Representatives. In current US politics, that ain’t happening.

Musk could just dismiss any concerns as fake news. The bigger problem is the fat orange rapist does connect with a lot of people who fall for his bluster, it's not readily apparent Musk could do the same

[Hugo]

I think the situation in Ukraine has had something of a galvanising effect on military spending within Europe and by extension, NATO. Spain and Finland have been sending gear to Ukraine, for instance along with the big hitters like Germany and France.

Trump his just going to rattle the same cages he has before and will shout much of the same sort of bullshit. He's already had a go at Mexico and Canada over immigration and drugs, for instance. His bluster will wear thin, everyone has seen it before and knows how he operates. Europe is pretty defiant about the threat Putin presents... if Donnie gets too blustery AND shows support for Putin he's going to be offside with Europe very quickly and he'll lose leverage. I don't think he'd understand that, he's too much invested in the greatest country on earth bullshit.

He's definitely a blowhard that is for sure. Foreign policy wise I think Trumps primary thinking is to avoid getting the US involved in unnecessary wars where there is no benefit for the average American in doing so. It's why he has trashed the Bush family, Liz Cheney etc any chance he gets. In fact he explicitly called out Liz prior to the election when he was saying something along the lines of "it's easy for you to advocate for war when you sit in a nice office in Washington DC and it's someone elses kid who is going to do the fighting". That was the jist of it anyway.

The US spent $30 million a DAY in Afghanistan and after 20 years walked away with pretty much nothing to show for it. That's the type of stuff that influences his foreign policy outlook and why people like Bill Kristol and John Bolton hate him.

Trump has lots of flaws of course but I think he gets that this provides little value for money to the average US taxpayer and that at the end of the day it's the average American kids who are the ones doing the fighting and the dying.

It’s quite difficult to square this with his spite in trying to ruin anyone who disagrees with him

Trump is not a nice person, all in all. I think his value is in steamrolling people who themselves are pieces of shit and who have profited off of the misery of others. There will never be any real accountability for the people who orchestrated the war on terror swindle so Trump getting a few digs in is as good as it gets.

On foreign policy I do think he sees that American taxpayers get fleeced with this world policeman stuff, it provides no tangible benefit to the average person.

[Niegs]

On foreign policy I do think he sees that American taxpayers get fleeced with this world policeman stuff, it provides no tangible benefit to the average person.

Defence industry jobs and knock-on economic effects? Gas as cheap as bottled water? Using their 'We protect your ass!' to get preferential prices / shipping on foreign goods? (Really have no clue, but there must be some economic benefits that indeed do trickle down to many average people?)

[fishfoodie]

On foreign policy I do think he sees that American taxpayers get fleeced with this world policeman stuff, it provides no tangible benefit to the average person.

Defence industry jobs and knock-on economic effects? Gas as cheap as bottled water? Using their 'We protect your ass!' to get preferential prices / shipping on foreign goods? (Really have no clue, but there must be some economic benefits that indeed do trickle down to many average people?)

What Air Force/Navy/Army bases stayed open post Cold War was almost entirely based on which GOP District they were in !

Military Porkbelly spending has been similarly distributed for the last 80 odd years.

The GOP love to whine about foreign wars etc, but they're always first in line to put riders on Government spending Bills to make sure their State get millions for toilet seat production on B-52s, or optics on M1A1s.

If you were building an MTB in any other Country, you wouldn't put thousands of miles between suppliers, so that your logistics chain stretched so long, & across so many States & Companies, just to appease a dozen different Politicians.

[Uncle fester]

Laura Loomer banned from xitter in the latest maga civil war skirmish?

[sockwithaticket]

Some other right wing accounts are having their paid for check marks removed as well which is basically a step to quash their visibility.

Essentially, Musk has gone mask off about wanting to use H1B visas to bring in cheaper workers from abroad. Funnily enough the 'America first' types that make up so much of the MAGA sphere aren't really down with that. Even Ann Coulter's weighing in against Muskrat, not just the fringe loons like Loomer. I saw a couple of the tweets MAGA's hag in chief posted before getting suspended, basically called out his past bank rolling of Dems and said he's a Johnny-come lately Repub who bought his way in. Elmo can't help but make people despise him wherever he goes despite how desperate he is to be liked.

[Niegs]

It's funny how they can't just keep their mouths shut and spring news on people as they're doing it. Pretty shit super villains ... or maybe they watch too many fictional ones who tell the protagonist their plan while there's still time to do something about it?

[sockwithaticket]

Tbh, they've not often run into any substantive consequences for their fuckery.

[Hugo]

It's funny how they can't just keep their mouths shut and spring news on people as they're doing it. Pretty shit super villains ... or maybe they watch too many fictional ones who tell the protagonist their plan while there's still time to do something about it?

Haha, yes it is so transparent. Musk is always tweeting about declining birthrates in the West because he is of course making the case for an open borders approach to legal immigration. He tries to frame it as wanting to promote meritocratic values but what it's really about is accessing cheap labour. The robber barons want their class of compliant serfs.

Same thing with his fixation on the US national debt, it's his pretext for demolishing the government. Less government= less regulation.

It's going to be interesting to see how this plays out as MAGA is an explicitly nationalist and nativist movement and Musk is a rootless capitalist. The US is just a place for him to make money and for people of his means if they destroy the country they can just up sticks and bugger off elsewhere.

[Rhubarb & Custard]

Some other right wing accounts are having their paid for check marks removed as well which is basically a step to quash their visibility.

Essentially, Musk has gone mask off about wanting to use H1B visas to bring in cheaper workers from abroad. Funnily enough the 'America first' types that make up so much of the MAGA sphere aren't really down with that. Even Ann Coulter's weighing in against Muskrat, not just the fringe loons like Loomer. I saw a couple of the tweets MAGA's hag in chief posted before getting suspended, basically called out his past bank rolling of Dems and said he's a Johnny-come lately Repub who bought his way in. Elmo can't help but make people despise him wherever he goes despite how desperate he is to be liked.

'tis a disturbing notion that Ann Coulter isn't considered a fringe lunatic

[sockwithaticket]

Some other right wing accounts are having their paid for check marks removed as well which is basically a step to quash their visibility.

Essentially, Musk has gone mask off about wanting to use H1B visas to bring in cheaper workers from abroad. Funnily enough the 'America first' types that make up so much of the MAGA sphere aren't really down with that. Even Ann Coulter's weighing in against Muskrat, not just the fringe loons like Loomer. I saw a couple of the tweets MAGA's hag in chief posted before getting suspended, basically called out his past bank rolling of Dems and said he's a Johnny-come lately Repub who bought his way in. Elmo can't help but make people despise him wherever he goes despite how desperate he is to be liked.

'tis a disturbing notion that Ann Coulter isn't considered a fringe lunatic

She ought to be, but she is entrenched in the Republican media establishment, she's not an outsider like Loomer who largely exists in the realm of social media and self-produced Youtube shows.

[TB63]

[fishfoodie]

Some other right wing accounts are having their paid for check marks removed as well which is basically a step to quash their visibility.

Essentially, Musk has gone mask off about wanting to use H1B visas to bring in cheaper workers from abroad. Funnily enough the 'America first' types that make up so much of the MAGA sphere aren't really down with that. Even Ann Coulter's weighing in against Muskrat, not just the fringe loons like Loomer. I saw a couple of the tweets MAGA's hag in chief posted before getting suspended, basically called out his past bank rolling of Dems and said he's a Johnny-come lately Repub who bought his way in. Elmo can't help but make people despise him wherever he goes despite how desperate he is to be liked.

'tis a disturbing notion that Ann Coulter isn't considered a fringe lunatic

Ann Coulter is a whore; she'll do, or say anything to advance her career one millimeter.

[Uncle fester]

A very long read about militias and the Donnie Brasco character who infiltrated them.
Serious ties to law enforcement.

https://www.propublica.org/article/ap3- ... litia-mole

[TB63]

Cry harder, wankstain..

[convoluted]

So much winning!
Trump's public humiliation of Trudeau helps push that lefty slimeball over the cliff.

Herr Klaus seethes as another corrupt pillar of his World Economic Forum crumbles:

[Niegs]

So much winning!
Trump's public humiliation of Trudeau helps push that lefty slimeball over the cliff.

Herr Klaus seethes as another corrupt pillar of his World Economic Forum crumbles:

Trump? More like his own party members said it's time and many Canadians, even those who supported him, say it's time to read the room and step aside for someone better... especially because the sane ones don't want that slimeball on the other end of the call as PM. It's a small sample size, but the conservatives in my family can't stand PP and are looking for alternatives.

Future Party could shave some votes if they get candidates in key ridings, if not all. And if PPC is still in the running, they took enough votes in several ridings from the Cons that handed a win to the Liberal.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Future_Party

[Hal Jordan]

Why are you responding to the pigeon chessmaster?

[Niegs]

Why are you responding to the pigeon chessmaster?

I guess I'm not in the 'right' spaces to be familiar with his schtick, but after watching it I was like 'Who is this guy?' Rabid anti-Trudeau people are bad enough, but ones outside of Canada are particularly ... interesting.

[tabascoboy]

Gulf of America - fuck yeah!

[Biffer]

Gulf of America - fuck yeah!

He also refused to rule out force if Denmark doesn’t give him Greenland.

[Uncle fester]

Gulf of America - fuck yeah!

Same press conference.

[Uncle fester]

Americans: “can we have affordable healthcare and higher wages?”

Trump: “How about we rename the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America!? Huh? Huh? How ‘bout it? Oh it will be so beautiful!”

[Marylandolorian]

Canada ready for the outcomes

[TB63]

[Guy Smiley]

Make Greenland America Again?

[Hal Jordan]

Make Greenland America Again?

Trump will get right on it after he collects the last payment from Mexico for the wall.

[Uncle fester]

Also stops the MAGA civil war dread in it's tracks.

[Biffer]

In that mindless ramble he also suggested that Hezbollah was responsible for the Jan 6th attack on congress.

[Sandstorm]

Americans: “can we have affordable healthcare and higher wages?”

Trump: “How about we rename the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America!? Huh? Huh? How ‘bout it? Oh it will be so beautiful!”

This is the correct answer. Trump is just using word salad as misdirection.

[Enzedder]

There will be so much shit spoken for the next 4 years - another 4 years of a free show.

Trump2.jpg (284.52 KiB) Viewed 708 times

[Niegs]

Also stops the MAGA civil war dread in it's tracks.

[Uncle fester]

More general USA stuff but risk your life for less than half of minimum wage and no chance of gainful employment at the end of it?

Where do I sign up?

https://www.teenvogue.com/story/wildfir ... ated-teens

[Niegs]

More general USA stuff but risk your life for less than half of minimum wage and no chance of gainful employment at the end of it?

Where do I sign up?

https://www.teenvogue.com/story/wildfir ... ated-teens

Always impressed that Teen Vogue does good journalism. (But that paragraph on recidivism I found confusing... unsure if it was meant to be positive or negative?)

The figure normal fire fighters make must be city ones, because I heard a more recent story about how poorly forest fire fighters are paid in the US.
https://mountainjournal.org/as-wildfire ... y-low-snow
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/fe ... rcna184888

[convoluted]

Go woke; go up in smoke.

When Newsom became California's governor-elect in 2019, Trump urged that he address that state's forest fire danger by building 10 reservoirs and clearing the dry underbrush.

Today with LA's fire hydrants at a trickle, Trump laments: Governor Gavin Newscum refused to sign the water restoration declaration put before him that would have allowed millions of gallons of water, from excess rain and snow melt from the North, to flow daily into many parts of California, including the areas that are currently burning in a virtually apocalyptic way ... Now the ultimate price is being paid ...

Recent 'atmospheric rivers' in California would have helped fill those reservoirs to the brim. But now, with the hills stripped bare, the next one of those will bring landslides.

Just last October Trump reiterated California's lack of water to fight a massive forest fire, a blaze inevitable as California remained lax with controlled burn offs and raking. For years Trump has railed at California's refusal to rake using bull dozers with an attachment fork that rips through the thick brush on the forest floor. Yet almost as a given the news channels always mocked that Trump demand as if he was referencing the garden rakes you use for leaves in the yard.

The insurance companies too were so certain of looming disaster that, fearing bankruptcy, they recently cancelled fire insurance for homes in that LA area.
At about the same time, the black female mayor of Los Angeles cut the firefighting budget by $17.5 million to divert multi-millions to woke causes instead.
Meanwhile, California had donated its 'surplus' fire fighting equipment to Ukraine.

In 2022, Los Angeles anointed as new fire chief a female LBGQTer. She promptly declared her priority to implement DEI policies to morph the mostly white and male firefighting force into a more ethnic-diverse and female body.
As many subsequent DEI recruits lacked capability then so the pass qualifications were lowered. Diversity mattered more than effectiveness. Currently, after nearly two days there remains zero containment of any of the multiple LA fires.

Trump's November triumph has hopefully stopped this idiocracy in its tracks.

[Guy Smiley]

I dunno which is more sad, minor internet trolls in far off places like New Zealand professing their love for Trump and all things MAGA as a sort of personal victory, or those same minor trolls posting propaganda pieces as gospel in support of their same onanistic percieved victories...

https://calmatters.org/environment/wild ... act-check/

“There is no such document as the water restoration declaration – that is pure fiction,” Newsom communications director Izzy Gardon said in a written statement. “The Governor is focused on protecting people, not playing politics, and making sure firefighters have all the resources they need.”
*************************
“Tying Bay-Delta management into devastating wildfires that have cost people’s lives and homes is nothing short of irresponsible, and it’s happening at a time when the Metropolitan Water District has the most water stored in its system in the history of the agency,” he said. “It’s not a matter of having enough water coming from Northern California to put out a fire. It’s about the continued devastating impacts of a changing climate.”

Trump appeared to be referring to water imported south from the Bay-Delta, fed by Northern California rivers and snowmelt. But most Los Angeles water does not come from Northern California. It comes via the city’s 112-year-old aqueduct that runs from the Owens Valley east of the Sierra Nevada, not the Delta, as well as groundwater. The city also imports water from the Metropolitan Water District, which relays water from the Colorado River and Delta to numerous local agencies. The city was the main motivating force for the building of the Colorado River Aqueduct in the 1930s.

In December, the Biden administration and state officials agreed to a new long-term operating plan for the Delta water projects that effectively replaced rules produced by the first Trump administration in 2019 — an action that may have sparked Trump’s latest social media post.

The new rules adjust water allocations for cities and farms and attempt to restore depleted populations of salmon and other fish, including the endangered Delta smelt. Some Central Valley farmers and Southern California cities will see more water and have endorsed the plan, while some farmers will get less. Water exports from the Delta to the San Joaquin Valley and Southern California via the State Water Project increase under the new plan.

[Uncle fester]

The insurance companies too were so certain of looming disaster that, fearing bankruptcy, they recently cancelled fire insurance for homes in that LA area.
At about the same time, the black female mayor of Los Angeles cut the firefighting budget by $17.5 million to divert multi-millions to woke causes instead.
Meanwhile, California had donated its 'surplus' fire fighting equipment to Ukraine.

Can you explain why the "black female" descriptor is relevant please?

[laurent]

The insurance companies too were so certain of looming disaster that, fearing bankruptcy, they recently cancelled fire insurance for homes in that LA area.
At about the same time, the black female mayor of Los Angeles cut the firefighting budget by $17.5 million to divert multi-millions to woke causes instead.
Meanwhile, California had donated its 'surplus' fire fighting equipment to Ukraine.

Can you explain why the "black female" descriptor is relevant please?

Racist gonna racist

[Biffer]

The insurance companies too were so certain of looming disaster that, fearing bankruptcy, they recently cancelled fire insurance for homes in that LA area.
At about the same time, the black female mayor of Los Angeles cut the firefighting budget by $17.5 million to divert multi-millions to woke causes instead.
Meanwhile, California had donated its 'surplus' fire fighting equipment to Ukraine.

Can you explain why the "black female" descriptor is relevant please?

Something something something trump.

[Kiwias]

Meanwhile the president-elect with the mentality of an 8 year-old (apologies to genuine 8 year-olds) posts “Governor Newsscum “ and smirks as if he has said something really clever. Naturally, his base love it as it shows their man is really sticking it to the liberals.